In 18th century New England, the preacher Jonathan Edwards delivered a fiery sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. He was so convincing in his forecast of damnation for unbelievers that many in his own congregation wept in fright. Guilt is a destructive emotion, especially that which is unearned.
Fast forward nearly 300 years and surprisingly little has changed. Yes, the colonies of Edwards' time are now a democratic superpower complete with Constitutional protections against religious establishment, but the same Puritanism is still alive and well. The modern-day Christian Right has determined that our society is in a state of moral decline. Apparently, our country rests in the hands of a God who grows angrier as America continues to grow more licentious and materialistic. These are dark times, they preach.
So where lies the path to salvation? This is where things get bizarre. These prophets of doom call themselves conservatives, supposedly proponents of limited government. So naturally, the moral purification they seek should be attained by the individual ' perhaps with some help from church and family. Sadly, this is not the case. The agenda of the Christian Right continues to ignore personal responsibility opting to call upon the state as its agent of purification.
Education is where religious conservatives' embrace of Big Government has done the most damage. The religious community believes in a story of the Earth's origins that flies in the face of scientific fact. If religious parents wish to teach their children this fiction, they have every right to do so. They can send their toddlers to private schools where educators of the cloth can sell Creationism in a more official setting. They can even send the children to public school, allow them to catch wind of their ape-like beginnings, and then dispel such notions over dinner.
Instead, religious conservatives continue to petition the state to force public schools to teach pseudo-science, or Intelligent Design as they call it. They have betrayed their own politics and chosen to regulate education in a liberalistic fashion. But it doesn't stop in science class. The Bush administration has strictly supported funding for abstinence-only sex education programs, thus imposing God's will on health education by ensuring children know nothing of condoms or birth control.
The politics of God require the state to invade not only schools, but hospitals as well. On behalf of the unborn, the Christian Right continues its crusade to criminalize abortion and strip women of their reproductive rights. If religious women wish to view themselves as vessels with an obligation to breed, they remain free to do so. However, the Christian Right is not content with this, and they assert that women should be unconditional breeders. They do not respect a woman's right to choose between birth and abortion ' as well as the perceived choice between Heaven and Hell. Instead they feel the state is better equipped to make this vital personal decision.
In religious conservatives' defense, sometimes serving the Almighty actually calls for limiting the scope of government. An example of this would be cutting funding for stem cell research. Of course, this isn't done in the spirit of upholding limited government. Gone are the numerous possible cures for an array of life-threatening ailments that plague mankind, all because a man in a fancy hat declares embryos sacred.
Liberals cannot be trusted to properly confront the primitivism of the Christian Right. Their policies are equally as irrational and Statist, only products of emotion rather than religion. Although neither camp would welcome a comparison, they share much more in common than either would ever want to admit.
The culture war is ultimately a war on individual rights. If anyone can lift the siege, it is traditional conservatives truly committed to individual liberty and human happiness. But if something makes one happy, it must be a sin, according to the religionists who have hijacked the party of limited government.
These pretenders are not conservatives, but are more accurately described as the liberals of the right-wing. Liberalism on behalf of God is liberalism all the same. Thinking people simply need the philosophical artillery to combat their dogma and reason is the key.
America is in the hands not of an angry God, but of an overzealous religious community that will stop at nothing to expand its theocratic grip on our way of life. They must be confronted without hesitation or guilt. The damnation they envision is all too possible.
What they haven't considered, however, is that they could be its source.
17 Archives
Joe Vance
